PNAS (Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences), as well as PLOS (Public Library of Science), although claiming in their names to represent all sciences, show a very clear concentration on biological sciences. Plos ONE has perhaps a dozen subdivisions of biomedics, whereas physics is a single monolithic remnant.

One way to understand major trends in the sciences today is to realize how much mainstream bio-medical research, computer science, and even economics and academic finance is becoming, or trying very hard to become, more like physics. For its part, physics is trying equally (or perhaps just slightly less) hard to get into these disciplines. Just as a matter of definition though, wouldn’t putting too much store by the physics-biology apparent disjunction be like, er, revivifying ‘vitalism’ and its various, er, incarnations?

Maybe it’s a matter of what decent writers who are writing for a lay audience actually cover? I don’t think it’s a matter of preferences so much as it is of what can be conveyed without really damn hard maths…

I reckon I fall pretty much exactly in the key market demographic for this kind of writing – interested and moderately intelligent but only semi-numerate and unqualified to understand hard science. So I can read Zimmer on parasitism, for example, and really feel excited that I have learned and understood something new – but cutting-edge physics (hell, plenty that isn’t at all cutting-edge!) is just too damn counter-intuitive.

That said, when the LHC actually starts generating results I think we’ll see a surge in physics writing… Oh, and calling 2008 ‘the year of the LHC’ when the blasted machine blew a fuse so quickly and has been waiting for the electrician ever since is perhaps stretching things a bit. Maybe 2009 with be… or 2010…

That does not contradict my suggestion. If popular science writing on physics is more confusing or unrewarding for the lay reader than similar writing on biology, that will be reflected in reader choices. There’s absolutuly mindblowing stuff in physics, but it tends to be far less amenable to compelling, persuasive, and comprehensible storytelling.

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